Mogadishu |
 |
by James Swingle |
(1)
Phillip wasn’t thinking of Mogadishu when he saw Karen’s long legs swing out from her booth at The Flowerpot Diner. In fact, at no point in this story does he think of Mogadishu. The list of things Phillip doesn’t think of in this story is long--long as Karen’s legs--and includes Mogadishu, Feng Shui, Hill Stations, falafel, cuts in overseas staffing by news organizations, Residential Schools, buffalo, the Khyber Pass, smallpox, paisley, salmon and the Bikini Atoll.
(2)
Phillip walked up behind Karen as she waited in line
by the cash register. He got her phone number. I leave their conversation
as an exercise for the reader.
They had a first date. Karen agreed to a second
date, at the end of which they kissed on her sofa. Before he went home,
Phillip managed to pull Karen’s shirt off, unhook her bra and touch her
breasts. He took off all his own clothes, but Karen was careful to only
touch him above the waist.
On the third date they had sex on Karen’s bed while her cat sat
on the dresser and ignored them. It lasted 11 minutes and 27 seconds. Her
cat’s name was Zag. Afterwards, Phillip and Karen cuddled
and didn’t speak of Mogadishu.
(3)
Pretty much everything I know about Mogadishu I learned from watching “Black Hawk Down” on DVD. I had to Google it to double-check the spelling. I picked it as my title because I like the way the name sounds. Mogadishu. Titles I never thought of include Beirut, Phnom Penh, Kinshasa, The Length of Karen’s Legs and Zag the Cat.
(4)
Phillip and Karen saw each other every Wednesday evening
after work. They would spend Wednesday night together at Phillip’s,
which meant Karen had a longer drive to work the following morning. Her
company sold a line of clothing for teenage girls. If you asked her whether
the factories where the clothing was made were in Mogadishu, she wouldn’t
know. Phillip and Karen also saw each other every Saturday afternoon,
and would spend the remainder of Saturday and all Sunday together.
One Sunday morning, while they were having sex, Karen
wrapped her long legs around Phillip’s waist and pulled him into her
with each thrust. She had never wrapped her long legs around him like
that during sex before, and she never did it again. Phillip thought a
lot about that one time, her long legs wrapped around him.
(5)
Phillip liked Sundays. He and Karen would always
have sex on Sunday mornings. Then they would lie around in bed, and go
out for a late lunch at The Flowerpot Diner.
Zag the cat sometimes thought about the can opener. He
stopped thinking about mating after he was fixed.
(6)
By telling you that Karen had long legs, I hoped you would assume she was attractive, and that when you visualized Phillip and Karen having sex, you would visualize two attractive people having sex. I find it is much more fun to read a story about attractive people having sex, don’t you?
(7)
The name Mogadishu might come from the Arabic maqad
shah, which
means “imperial seat of the shah”. Or it might come
from the Swahili mwyu wa, which means “last northern city”.
It took me five minutes and 18 seconds to find that out on Wikipedia. I
wanted to look up a specific fact about Mogadishu to make you question
whether I knew as little about Mogadishu as I claimed above, or whether
feigning ignorance was a narrative strategy.
(8)
In Mogadishu, a couple was having sex at the precise same instant as Phillip and Karen were having sex and not thinking about Mogadishu. Only it was Sunday evening in Mogadishu. You can imagine the couple in Mogadishu as attractive.
(9)
One Wednesday evening, Phillip and Karen were having takeout Chinese food. Karen stopped eating and looked down at the table until Phillip saw something was wrong and asked her what was the matter. Karen told Phillip that nothing was the matter. Phillip asked her again what was the matter. She told Phillip she didn’t think the relationship was going anywhere. Since we are imagining Karen as attractive, we can imagine that Phillip was quite upset at the thought of losing her. He thought of that time she had wrapped her long legs around him during sex, and how he kept hoping she would do that again.
(10)
Phillip and Karen didn’t break up that evening. They got together the following Saturday afternoon, had sex that Sunday morning, and went out to The Flowerpot Diner for a late lunch that Sunday afternoon. Phillip pretended everything was back to normal, and didn’t ask Karen what was the matter when she stopped eating and looked down at the table during their late lunch at The Flowerpot Diner.
(11)
The attractive couple in Mogadishu that we met in
section eight was having sex again. There was no cat in the room. It
lasted four minutes and 55 seconds. I’m sorry if that disappoints
a stereotype. You may imagine it taking longer than that if you wish.
Their relationship seemed to go much better than Phillip and Karen’s. After
they had sex, they cuddled and talked about their city.
(12)
It was two more weeks before Karen broke up with Phillip. She did it on a Saturday afternoon, which meant he didn’t get to have sex that Sunday morning, and didn’t go out to The Flowerpot Diner for a late lunch that Sunday afternoon. He would never again have her long legs wrapped around him, pulling him into her with each thrust. He sat alone in his apartment, not thinking about anything.
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James Swingle is a lifelong New Yorker, who the Canadian government recently decided was fit to relocate to British Columbia to be with his wife Jennifer. James and Jennifer were both quite pleased with the decision, as after a year of marriage they thought it was high time to give this living together thing a try.
There's a place in the West Village of New York City where the normally parallel West 12th and West 4th Streets meet. I've long walked by that spot and thought it was the perfect location for a small eatery called Noneuclidean Cafe. A place where people could sit down over some good food and a strong coffee to tell stories, read poems and talk about their personal journeys. Unfortunately, the rent for such a space in Manhattan would leave me so deep in debt I wouldn't be able to eat at my own cafe. So I created Noneuclidean Café online, where the rent is cheaper.